Elephants are highly mobile creatures and a herd needs to
travel atleast 10 kilometers a day. If we think elephants can be restricted to
an area of about 100 sq.km then we are taking away their basic behavior.
Moreover, they need tones of vegetation as food every day, now if we try and
construct them in smaller areas, they are bound to ravage the area in a matter
of days and then will enter into localities and would destroy hectares of
crops, many lives and ample property.
In
Jharkhand it’s a burning problem for the villagers every year tons of food
grains and crops are destroyed for elephants.
In India, while poaching for tusk continues to be a large scale
phenomenon, it is the influx of elephants rather we can say ‘Man Elephant
Conflict’ which has been creating a furor. According to project Elephant, 3% of
India’s total land surface is elephant country and 10% of this is affected by
conflict. However, wild elephants probably kill far more people than tigers,
leopards or lions as they suddenly get into locality in search of food and kill
lives. According to MOEFCC data, 391 people and 39 elephants died in 2015-2016
across India as a result of conflict. This indicates that elephants are
increasingly foraging for food outside the ‘designated’ forest areas. Main crux
of the problem lies in habitat loss and shrinkage of food sources for elephants
which is directly related to deforestation and increasing demand of human need.
With increasing human casualty dues to influx of elephants, it has become imperative
that there be a warning system alerting the residents on the peripheries of
elephant corridors of the elephants’ advent. This can only save the lives but
not the crops and properties belonging to the people dwelling in particular
area. Influx of elephants is inevitable as their habitat has been encroached by
the humans for their own purpose. So we cannot totally blame the elephants.
If a viable solution
to man elephant conflict is not reached at the earliest, this- coupled with the
lucrative ivory – will serve as the death knell for elephants.
By Ratula Das (1st sem, RKMVERI)
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